but in practice, prohibitions against alcohol work just as well as prohibitions against pot - ie, not at all.
You want 'effective' dry counties, look towards Alaska. There are places that are pretty much only accessible by plane, and they have officers there that are almost like customs. They still get alcohol in there, but it's at a lot lower rate.
Down south, the only reason most counties are still 'dry' is a combination of: 1. Cronyism - the politicians are relatives/part owners of the alcohol stores located just outside of their jurisdiction 2. Temperance types - MAD types that are against any alcohol 3. NIMBY types - they're convinced that any change would be bad and that a liquor store would set up right next to them and draw drunks from counties over to their door step(despite the fact that the only reason they see lots of drunks at the store the next county over is all the people migrating from their county PLUS the drunks in the county the store is located in).
They bring so much that it's obvious that it's for sale.
And how much would that be? I know that federal statutes have rules in them where if you have more then X amount it's 'obvious' you intended to sell them, then lowered said amounts because the dealers simply started carrying less, stashing their stuff in small amounts. The only ones with large amounts were the mules. There are recorded cases of tolerant people where a week's worth of their habit busted those limits easily.
If you're an individual user driving the 200 miles from Denver to Scottsbluff, or the roughly 500 miles from Denver to Lincoln or Omaha, how much are you going to buy? Enough for a weekend, week, or are you going to consider buy months worth?
That being said, I'd rather see small scale dealers buying from Colorado than large scale drug gangs bringing it up from Mexico.
but it will be less if Nebraska and Oklahoma also legalise it.
I think of it like red light cameras, the 2nd invasion of Iraq, and most political campaigns - the justification they will give for the action isn't necessarily their justification, but the justification they think YOU will care most about.
IE for red light cameras they'll advertise on safety, but to most planning boards they're trying to sell them to they'll talk revenue. Bush wanted to finish daddy's war, but talked chemical weapons to the world for allied assistance.
I can't check until tonight when I get home from work but are account regions locked? I know mine currently shows the US but when I travel to Japan next month, will it update?
Disclaimer: AC mentioned it's against the TOS, but I've done it in the past - Military deployed to the middle east, various countries. I've had issues where I 'had' to use my VPN* in order to purchase games on steam due to mismatches between my local IP and my CC(payment method). Even picked up some cheaper games in a couple spots.
I didn't receive any bans, but given that I was actually *in* the foreign country, but VPN's back to the USA in order to use my US credit card to buy a game for my US steam account, I figure I'm not the target audience. Probably hard to tell I'm VPNing as well given that I used a VPS that I'm the only one VPNing from. The pingponging might be a clue, but I wasn't using it to buy lots of 'gifts'(IE act as a retailer). Even then, they might figure out that I'm likely a US military person from the location and not want to deal with the butthurt and negative publicity when I'm not actually getting a price cut.
*From a VPS that I control, not a public VPN service
I *think* Germany is one of the countries with a game rating mafia that insists on changes to their version of the game in order to authorize it's sale in country. Wikipedia agrees at first glance with "Censorship of motion pictures, video games and Internet sites hosted in Germany are considered to be the strictest in the European Union."
Ergo more programming expense as they have to make the blood cool-aid colored, make it seem like all the bad guys are actually robots, etc...
The voice acting may be part of it, but usually quite small.
Usual reasons: 1. The cost of the raw oil is actually a small component of the cost of getting refined fuel into your tank. There's shipping, refining, distributer, retail, and tax expenses to consider. 2. There's a lag period. 3. Despite this gasoline prices have dropped enough that it's been on the national news multiple times.
It wouldn't be the first time either... I recall a few instances in the '80s and even the '90s where some schlub or other escaped prison in that era (or before), got himself a new identity, and decades later did something stupid (IIRC, in one case the dumbass ran for a local public office, and a local reporter researching his background found the inconsistencies).
Nazi war criminals are another example of them fading into society. Quite a few have died or even slid into dementia before being found.
I remember reading about the dementia case - they're holding this murder trial (in Germany) and the accused can't even remember that he's in a courthouse half the time. But they're so balls up on prosecuting him that they're doing daily competency tests - if he passed the test the trial went forward that day. Otherwise it didn't. They spend years trying to prosecute him(with delays getting longer and longer due to him sliding further into dementia), he's obviously reached the point that even if convicted all that's going to happen is that they'll assign a prison guard to his room in the care facility at some massive expense(other medical issues besides slowly losing his mind ensured that, their prison system didn't have that level of care available), etc...
And he was only supposed to have been a common camp guard at the time, which was deliberately ignored back during the Nuremberg trials.
As a group they're pretty good, still have their bad apples. There's quite a few sitting in prison for various offenses.
I think that if you're an illegal immigrant and predisposed to criminal activity there's always the drug gangs willing to hire. As which point your a drug gang member and not an illegal immigrant, even if you're in the USA illegally.
Deportation after 1 offense probably helps.
But I actually sort of agree with mmell, assuming they didn't simply shift towards committing crimes against others*, system worked.
Personally, I think we are at the very end of low interest rates right now. Russia's latest rate hike is going to bite. Low energy prices will spur economic activity in pretty short order. All this will conspire so the Fed will be tightening the money supply.
Oh, I agree. The way I look at it - you look at any project, figure out the payoff, how long the payoff will take, the risk, etc... This results in an expected return percentage - it'll return the equivalent as though the money had been invested in a savings account of return X%.
The money flows to the highest returns first. Stuff that returns 100%. Today we're investing in things with 4% expected returns, because money is flowing so easily. It won't last, but it's happening.
By what realistic measure did AEDE expect Google to pay, when it outright stated that it'd shut down in Germany before paying? Did they expect Spain to be different?
Like has been said, news aggregation is a loss leader for google - they don't even get advertising money on those pages.
One has to love the unforeseen consequences. By the way, this is the first time I saw that the Spanish legislation went further than the German ones - The German court decision merely gave the right to charge, but per the article the Spanish one mandated charging.
I can't help but picture that AEDE is going 'NOT AS PLANNED NOT AS PLANNED!!!'. Though how they could expect Google's actions to be any different in this case than it was in Germany, I don't know.
Spend many millions in lobbying efforts to force Google to pay for doing X, only to have Google go 'Fine, we won't do X', costing them potentially millions more in advertising.
Now, one should remember that consumer protection and business regulation is much stronger over in Europe, but deciding that a business has to continue to run at a loss is pushing it. It's more likely that they'll get a emergency overruling of the 'must pay' system.
Because let's face it: NOBODY is going to want to run a news aggregator where they have to pay to list the news. It's more likely that the news sites would have to pay to be listed.
The possible problem though is that Pediatricians frequently can't count on seeing a child and administering vaccines on a regular basis, so they usually do a bunch of vaccines all in the same visit, which possibly exposes the child to much more aluminum in their system all at once than is healthy.
They usually administer a 'bunch at a time' because seeing the doctor is fairly expensive in both time and money. As for the amount of aluminum, do you have any figures on how much is too much, and how vaccines 'can' exceed that, especially since most such vaccines are combined today?
Our reasoning is that the vacine is highly likely to actually cause a case of Chicken Pox, while it does not provide an actual immunity worth the term.
Really? What sort of percentage do you consider 'highly'? Because the CDC says that's 'highly unlikely', which given CDC stuff is probably less than 0.1%. Before the vaccine infection rate rounded to something near 100% of people getting it, normally in childhood. Term of protection is: >90% after 20 years (immune systems vary). For example, I have an aunt who's had chicken pox over a dozen times. Her immune system just keeps 'forgetting'.
It doesn't actually do anything to prevent Shingles, which is the real long term threat of Chicken Pox.
Per both CDC and wikipedia, the protective action against shingles is getting what amounts to a larger dose of the very same vaccine. When I'm older, I'm going to need that booster since I've had the disease.
which doesn't actually work out because with the vaccine and boosters you will probably have more outbreaks and so more sick time taken.
Any citation/evidence on the vaccine causing outbreaks of the disease? I mean, something that would see the CDC getting it's ass reamed in congressional hearings and the maker sued for release of a vaccine that's worse than ineffective?
And finally the big kicker is that because the immunity is much weaker from the vaccine than the regular Chicken Pox and requires booster shots as time goes on, we are likely to soon see a generation of young adults who don't actually have an immunity to Chicken Pox, that'll be lots of fun.
Again, CDC says >90% after 20 years remain immune. Worst case, recommend a booster at 25, 45 & switch to shingles at 65. in the adult vaccination schedule. Much like the Tetanus vaccine(every 10 years in adults).
I said a component was missing in the plastic insulation.
Reread your own post. You missed the 'in' - "due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation."
It changes the meaning quite a bit, which caused me to wonder how the hell the installers didn't notice that something was missing insulation, as well as wondering if it was something special due to calling it a power cord(which here is basically 'modular non-permanent electrical cord intended to power a device).
At one point I was wondering if it was a component being used to hook up generators or something.
While there's a number of different plugs, all this stuff is modular today. Since the cables need to be rated from 100V-240V(plus safety margin) for a constant wattage draw due to universal power supplies, they can use the same cable for all of them.
Then you just contract for the appropriate number of plugs for the various standards, of the appropriate amperage capacity, all with the same wire-side interface.
You screw that interface up, and it's the most logical spot, you're going to screw a lot of cables for a lot of different companies up.
Some 40000 houses in Australia need to be rewired due to the recent use of a powercord by a specific company which failed to meet Australian standards due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation.
Sounds odd. Here in the USA 'power cord' implies what's being recalled, and 'rewired' implies replacing the wiring in a home. Was it some variation of Non-metallic building wire?
Is this the incident? FTA: "While good-quality cable will last decades (up to 40 years) the Infinity brand is said to become brittle after 5 years, potentially exposing live conductors, creating the risk of fire and or electrocution."
1. I hope your guy's cable lasts more than 40 years. I had wiring much older than that in my last house, and my current is getting up there. 2. It doesn't say it was missing the insulation, the insulation was improperly chosen such that it'd break down early. Much harder to see.
I'm guessing it's not the wire. I'd guess it's the connection to the plug. They probably: Didn't use the right solder Didn't use enough solder Didn't use adequate lead-in.
This results in a connection that gets a little too warm, the solder melts/softens and tends to migrate a bit, the connection comes loose, and a marginal connection creates a point of resistance that creates a LOT of heat, potentially fire.
And yet here we are today.... I'm just waiting for the day when you have to ship all your luggage a day ahead of travel and fly in paper hospital gowns.
With the charges that airlines are imposing on baggage, it's often cheaper to mail your stuff than to fly with it.
What is more, the encryption keys can be held on office thin clients that transparently download the decryption engine and keys from an onsite server which likewise can serve both to remote users as part of their login script.
Better yet, issue the users a smart card that contains the encryption key. They plug that into the thin client with a pin in order to log on. That way you also avoid weak password stuff.
I'm just trying to explain why I think that some sort of shielding, either reflective or ablative (if not both) isn't a waste of mass on a missile that's going against a laser defense.
First, you're telling me things I already know again. The easiest argument it not being wasted mass is 'If we don't put defenses against lasers on this missile it's unlikely to get through and strike it's target'. You end up either armoring them or sending a shoal of them to overwhelm the lasers.
You might not like spending the mass, but you still do it.
This, however, may run into a problem with: Armor tends to be heavy, ergo to maintain range we have to put in a bigger engine and more fuel, which leads to needing more armor, which means a bigger engine and more fuel to maintain speed. A bigger missile may be easier to target by the laser, which means you need even more armor.
It doesn't go on permanently, of course, but you can end up with a substantially bigger and more expensive missile in the end. Or one with a substantially smaller warhead because you couldn't make the submarine launched missile bigger without redesigning the submarines. Or maybe you sacrificed range.
Because, really, it's a little plastic tub with coffee in it and it isn't rocket science.
I'd argue that a 'k-cup' would be hard to patent due to having an obvious nature. The trick would be that the machine is patented, which is why 'everybody' could make k-cup compatible tubs, but not the machines. Well, a google search shows those patents have likely expired as well, I'm seeing lots of compatible machines.
Really, you'd just have to change the machine enough to avoid Keurig's patents. How? Depends on how the patents were written.
Slashdot Mirror
but in practice, prohibitions against alcohol work just as well as prohibitions against pot - ie, not at all.
You want 'effective' dry counties, look towards Alaska. There are places that are pretty much only accessible by plane, and they have officers there that are almost like customs. They still get alcohol in there, but it's at a lot lower rate.
Down south, the only reason most counties are still 'dry' is a combination of:
1. Cronyism - the politicians are relatives/part owners of the alcohol stores located just outside of their jurisdiction
2. Temperance types - MAD types that are against any alcohol
3. NIMBY types - they're convinced that any change would be bad and that a liquor store would set up right next to them and draw drunks from counties over to their door step(despite the fact that the only reason they see lots of drunks at the store the next county over is all the people migrating from their county PLUS the drunks in the county the store is located in).
They bring so much that it's obvious that it's for sale.
And how much would that be? I know that federal statutes have rules in them where if you have more then X amount it's 'obvious' you intended to sell them, then lowered said amounts because the dealers simply started carrying less, stashing their stuff in small amounts. The only ones with large amounts were the mules. There are recorded cases of tolerant people where a week's worth of their habit busted those limits easily.
If you're an individual user driving the 200 miles from Denver to Scottsbluff, or the roughly 500 miles from Denver to Lincoln or Omaha, how much are you going to buy? Enough for a weekend, week, or are you going to consider buy months worth?
That being said, I'd rather see small scale dealers buying from Colorado than large scale drug gangs bringing it up from Mexico.
but it will be less if Nebraska and Oklahoma also legalise it.
I think of it like red light cameras, the 2nd invasion of Iraq, and most political campaigns - the justification they will give for the action isn't necessarily their justification, but the justification they think YOU will care most about.
IE for red light cameras they'll advertise on safety, but to most planning boards they're trying to sell them to they'll talk revenue. Bush wanted to finish daddy's war, but talked chemical weapons to the world for allied assistance.
scholar.google.com if anybody's interested.
Effects of scheduled overtime on labor productivity - Abstract says 'no significant effect on productivity'
Productivity in manufacturing...: As hours/day dropped, they worked more days(of the year), so productivity remained about the same.
Scheduled Overtime and Labor Productivity: Quantitative Analysis: Productivity drops 10-15% for 50/60 hour work weeks.
Effect of Reducing Interns' Work Hours: Surprise, Surprise, NOT working medical interns for 24+ hours straight reduces serious medical errors by more than 50%.
I can't check until tonight when I get home from work but are account regions locked? I know mine currently shows the US but when I travel to Japan next month, will it update?
Disclaimer: AC mentioned it's against the TOS, but I've done it in the past - Military deployed to the middle east, various countries. I've had issues where I 'had' to use my VPN* in order to purchase games on steam due to mismatches between my local IP and my CC(payment method). Even picked up some cheaper games in a couple spots.
I didn't receive any bans, but given that I was actually *in* the foreign country, but VPN's back to the USA in order to use my US credit card to buy a game for my US steam account, I figure I'm not the target audience. Probably hard to tell I'm VPNing as well given that I used a VPS that I'm the only one VPNing from. The pingponging might be a clue, but I wasn't using it to buy lots of 'gifts'(IE act as a retailer). Even then, they might figure out that I'm likely a US military person from the location and not want to deal with the butthurt and negative publicity when I'm not actually getting a price cut.
*From a VPS that I control, not a public VPN service
I *think* Germany is one of the countries with a game rating mafia that insists on changes to their version of the game in order to authorize it's sale in country. Wikipedia agrees at first glance with "Censorship of motion pictures, video games and Internet sites hosted in Germany are considered to be the strictest in the European Union."
Ergo more programming expense as they have to make the blood cool-aid colored, make it seem like all the bad guys are actually robots, etc...
The voice acting may be part of it, but usually quite small.
I was in grade school during that period and I don't remember them covering the former USSR states much. It might have been a regional thing.
Usual reasons:
1. The cost of the raw oil is actually a small component of the cost of getting refined fuel into your tank. There's shipping, refining, distributer, retail, and tax expenses to consider.
2. There's a lag period.
3. Despite this gasoline prices have dropped enough that it's been on the national news multiple times.
It wouldn't be the first time either... I recall a few instances in the '80s and even the '90s where some schlub or other escaped prison in that era (or before), got himself a new identity, and decades later did something stupid (IIRC, in one case the dumbass ran for a local public office, and a local reporter researching his background found the inconsistencies).
Nazi war criminals are another example of them fading into society. Quite a few have died or even slid into dementia before being found.
I remember reading about the dementia case - they're holding this murder trial (in Germany) and the accused can't even remember that he's in a courthouse half the time. But they're so balls up on prosecuting him that they're doing daily competency tests - if he passed the test the trial went forward that day. Otherwise it didn't. They spend years trying to prosecute him(with delays getting longer and longer due to him sliding further into dementia), he's obviously reached the point that even if convicted all that's going to happen is that they'll assign a prison guard to his room in the care facility at some massive expense(other medical issues besides slowly losing his mind ensured that, their prison system didn't have that level of care available), etc...
And he was only supposed to have been a common camp guard at the time, which was deliberately ignored back during the Nuremberg trials.
As a group they're pretty good, still have their bad apples. There's quite a few sitting in prison for various offenses.
I think that if you're an illegal immigrant and predisposed to criminal activity there's always the drug gangs willing to hire. As which point your a drug gang member and not an illegal immigrant, even if you're in the USA illegally.
Deportation after 1 offense probably helps.
But I actually sort of agree with mmell, assuming they didn't simply shift towards committing crimes against others*, system worked.
*I'm taking 'giving a fake name' as a given.
Personally, I think we are at the very end of low interest rates right now. Russia's latest rate hike is going to bite. Low energy prices will spur economic activity in pretty short order. All this will conspire so the Fed will be tightening the money supply.
Oh, I agree. The way I look at it - you look at any project, figure out the payoff, how long the payoff will take, the risk, etc... This results in an expected return percentage - it'll return the equivalent as though the money had been invested in a savings account of return X%.
The money flows to the highest returns first. Stuff that returns 100%. Today we're investing in things with 4% expected returns, because money is flowing so easily. It won't last, but it's happening.
If you don't make your money back in 5 years, there are better investments out there.
Low interest rates have been pushing timelines out. At 10%, 5 years makes sense. At under 5%, 10 years makes more sense.
News at 11: Repricing tools are used to match prices as well as undercut them.
Still leaves the important bit of setting a price floor you can live with.
The Spanish lawmakers wanted to prevent that.
By what realistic measure did AEDE expect Google to pay, when it outright stated that it'd shut down in Germany before paying? Did they expect Spain to be different?
Like has been said, news aggregation is a loss leader for google - they don't even get advertising money on those pages.
One has to love the unforeseen consequences. By the way, this is the first time I saw that the Spanish legislation went further than the German ones - The German court decision merely gave the right to charge, but per the article the Spanish one mandated charging.
I can't help but picture that AEDE is going 'NOT AS PLANNED NOT AS PLANNED!!!'. Though how they could expect Google's actions to be any different in this case than it was in Germany, I don't know.
Spend many millions in lobbying efforts to force Google to pay for doing X, only to have Google go 'Fine, we won't do X', costing them potentially millions more in advertising.
Now, one should remember that consumer protection and business regulation is much stronger over in Europe, but deciding that a business has to continue to run at a loss is pushing it. It's more likely that they'll get a emergency overruling of the 'must pay' system.
Because let's face it: NOBODY is going to want to run a news aggregator where they have to pay to list the news. It's more likely that the news sites would have to pay to be listed.
The possible problem though is that Pediatricians frequently can't count on seeing a child and administering vaccines on a regular basis, so they usually do a bunch of vaccines all in the same visit, which possibly exposes the child to much more aluminum in their system all at once than is healthy.
They usually administer a 'bunch at a time' because seeing the doctor is fairly expensive in both time and money. As for the amount of aluminum, do you have any figures on how much is too much, and how vaccines 'can' exceed that, especially since most such vaccines are combined today?
Our reasoning is that the vacine is highly likely to actually cause a case of Chicken Pox, while it does not provide an actual immunity worth the term.
Really? What sort of percentage do you consider 'highly'? Because the CDC says that's 'highly unlikely', which given CDC stuff is probably less than 0.1%. Before the vaccine infection rate rounded to something near 100% of people getting it, normally in childhood.
Term of protection is: >90% after 20 years (immune systems vary). For example, I have an aunt who's had chicken pox over a dozen times. Her immune system just keeps 'forgetting'.
It doesn't actually do anything to prevent Shingles, which is the real long term threat of Chicken Pox.
Per both CDC and wikipedia, the protective action against shingles is getting what amounts to a larger dose of the very same vaccine. When I'm older, I'm going to need that booster since I've had the disease.
which doesn't actually work out because with the vaccine and boosters you will probably have more outbreaks and so more sick time taken.
Any citation/evidence on the vaccine causing outbreaks of the disease? I mean, something that would see the CDC getting it's ass reamed in congressional hearings and the maker sued for release of a vaccine that's worse than ineffective?
And finally the big kicker is that because the immunity is much weaker from the vaccine than the regular Chicken Pox and requires booster shots as time goes on, we are likely to soon see a generation of young adults who don't actually have an immunity to Chicken Pox, that'll be lots of fun.
Again, CDC says >90% after 20 years remain immune. Worst case, recommend a booster at 25, 45 & switch to shingles at 65. in the adult vaccination schedule. Much like the Tetanus vaccine(every 10 years in adults).
I said a component was missing in the plastic insulation.
Reread your own post. You missed the 'in' - "due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation."
It changes the meaning quite a bit, which caused me to wonder how the hell the installers didn't notice that something was missing insulation, as well as wondering if it was something special due to calling it a power cord(which here is basically 'modular non-permanent electrical cord intended to power a device).
At one point I was wondering if it was a component being used to hook up generators or something.
Thanks for the information. I tried finding more on the failure modes, but didn't see a link to the exact problem.
While there's a number of different plugs, all this stuff is modular today. Since the cables need to be rated from 100V-240V(plus safety margin) for a constant wattage draw due to universal power supplies, they can use the same cable for all of them.
Then you just contract for the appropriate number of plugs for the various standards, of the appropriate amperage capacity, all with the same wire-side interface.
You screw that interface up, and it's the most logical spot, you're going to screw a lot of cables for a lot of different companies up.
Some 40000 houses in Australia need to be rewired due to the recent use of a powercord by a specific company which failed to meet Australian standards due to a specific component missing the plastic insulation.
Sounds odd. Here in the USA 'power cord' implies what's being recalled, and 'rewired' implies replacing the wiring in a home. Was it some variation of Non-metallic building wire?
Is this the incident?
FTA: "While good-quality cable will last decades (up to 40 years) the Infinity brand is said to become brittle after 5 years, potentially exposing live conductors, creating the risk of fire and or electrocution."
1. I hope your guy's cable lasts more than 40 years. I had wiring much older than that in my last house, and my current is getting up there.
2. It doesn't say it was missing the insulation, the insulation was improperly chosen such that it'd break down early. Much harder to see.
I'm guessing it's not the wire. I'd guess it's the connection to the plug.
They probably:
Didn't use the right solder
Didn't use enough solder
Didn't use adequate lead-in.
This results in a connection that gets a little too warm, the solder melts/softens and tends to migrate a bit, the connection comes loose, and a marginal connection creates a point of resistance that creates a LOT of heat, potentially fire.
And yet here we are today.... I'm just waiting for the day when you have to ship all your luggage a day ahead of travel and fly in paper hospital gowns.
With the charges that airlines are imposing on baggage, it's often cheaper to mail your stuff than to fly with it.
Paper hospital gowns might be a while.
What is more, the encryption keys can be held on office thin clients that transparently download the decryption engine and keys from an onsite server which likewise can serve both to remote users as part of their login script.
Better yet, issue the users a smart card that contains the encryption key. They plug that into the thin client with a pin in order to log on. That way you also avoid weak password stuff.
I'm just trying to explain why I think that some sort of shielding, either reflective or ablative (if not both) isn't a waste of mass on a missile that's going against a laser defense.
First, you're telling me things I already know again. The easiest argument it not being wasted mass is 'If we don't put defenses against lasers on this missile it's unlikely to get through and strike it's target'. You end up either armoring them or sending a shoal of them to overwhelm the lasers.
You might not like spending the mass, but you still do it.
This, however, may run into a problem with: Armor tends to be heavy, ergo to maintain range we have to put in a bigger engine and more fuel, which leads to needing more armor, which means a bigger engine and more fuel to maintain speed. A bigger missile may be easier to target by the laser, which means you need even more armor.
It doesn't go on permanently, of course, but you can end up with a substantially bigger and more expensive missile in the end. Or one with a substantially smaller warhead because you couldn't make the submarine launched missile bigger without redesigning the submarines. Or maybe you sacrificed range.
Because, really, it's a little plastic tub with coffee in it and it isn't rocket science.
I'd argue that a 'k-cup' would be hard to patent due to having an obvious nature. The trick would be that the machine is patented, which is why 'everybody' could make k-cup compatible tubs, but not the machines. Well, a google search shows those patents have likely expired as well, I'm seeing lots of compatible machines.
Really, you'd just have to change the machine enough to avoid Keurig's patents. How? Depends on how the patents were written.